


The Cunning & The Curious

by schlummern



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Draco Malfoy Being an Idiot, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Luna Lovegood Being Luna Lovegood, Other, not my first language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27980151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schlummern/pseuds/schlummern
Summary: Draco had considered her a lunatic for years, but then Peeves manages to lock them together in a cupboard and he suffers a claustrophobic attack. Forced to listen, he decides that the mind of Luna Lovegood might be the greatest in existence.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood & Draco Malfoy, Luna Lovegood/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	The Cunning & The Curious

**Author's Note:**

> During Harry Potters 5th year.
> 
> One of the most frustrating things of the whole series is the underestimate of the peculiar Luna Lovegood, and I want this to change. :(
> 
> English is NOT my native language, and you will probably notice that.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy! <3

Draco was furious and swaggering down the hallway of the fourth corridor fast and with long, aggressive steps. It was only the third day of fifth year, and Harry Potter had already managed to piss him off by just existing and being glorious, popular and successful without any endeavours.

With a stone-turning glare he made a group of Hufflepuffs hurry out of the way and he turned around the corner, eyes still on the third years - 

he ran against another person and something clattered loudly as a pile of books fell to the stone ground, scattering all over the area. He tripped over a leg, probably, and gracelessly tumbled to the floor, landing half on top of the person.

For only the fraction of a second he noticed the softness of the body, unwillingly delightful observing that it was a girl. He might had an important name, but Draco Malfoy still was a teenage boy.

He pushed himself off the person quickly, looking into the wide, silvery eyes of a certain Ravenclaw. 

"Can't you look where you are walking? Or were you distracted by the nugles again, you lunatic", he barked at her, rolling to his feet and starting to dust off his robes, not even bothering to give her a hand.

The blonde girl gracefully sat up and started collecting her books again. 

"I'm sorry, I was not really paying attention", she calmly apologised in that tender voice of hers. "And they are called nargles. But they don't like to go near the wrackspurts, so you don't have to worry."

He felt unexplainably angry and provoked by her way of talking so soft and not defending herself, and not being scared at all. He wanted a fight and all she would give him was the feeling that he was wrong and not important.

It didn't matter if she was angry, hurt, scared - he just wanted a reaction, something, anything.

"You are fucking nuts", he spat.

She charmed her books to fit into her back again, dusting off her colourful striped wool sweater magically. 

"It does not matter to me what you think, Draco."

He was a few seconds away from hexing her, already half into the movement of pulling his wand, when a loud rumbling was to be heard in the corridor. The students both turned around to the source of the noise and Draco felt utter dismay grasp him when the transparent figure of Peeves the Poltergeist appeared and his maniac laugh filled the area.

Wether he nor Luna could react when he gave both of them a large push with his magic and they stumbled into an old broom closet, the door swinging shut behind them with a loud bang. 

"Peeves!", he barked loudly. "The Bloody Baron will hear about this, you idiot!"

Draco felt the uneasy shudder as Peeves laughingly floated through them and disappeared through the wall again.

His eyes slowly got used to the dark, he still decided to cast a Lumos. He watched as the light cast a silver shine on Luna and she rattled at the door. Nothing happened.

She tried it with an Alohomora, nothing happened.

"I think we're stuck", she shrugged lightly and swung herself on the very small table in the room. He could even feel her breath, as there was very little space.

Panic started to build inside of him.

"How do you mean, we're fucking stuck?!", he snapped. He pushed closer and tried the doorknob, too, then casting a series of spells on the door.

"It feels like the door is magically concealed, I don't think we can open it. But ghost magic wears off after some time, so we shouldn't be in here too long."

"Define 'not too long'."

"Mh, maybe a few hours? Not that lon-"

Draco interrupted her rudely. "A few HOURS?!?"

He kicked against the door and tried throwing his body against it, once. Luna decided to intervene.

"Stop, you are hurting yourself. We won't be able to open the door from the inside, all we can do is wait and sit it out", she softly explained.

He nearly exploded. "You stop being so calm!" 

His hands slowly started to shake a little and his heartbeat was unhealthily fast. He paced around the few centimetres that he had, needing to keep himself busy, having to restrain himself. He gritted his teeth at how weak he was, going nuts in front of the lunatic just because he was in a little broom chamber.

"There is no shame in being scared of something, Draco."

"I am not scared!"

He started sweating lightly, his breath being out of control and the air too thin.

"You do know how to perform Legilimens, do you?"

Draco looked at her in wonder, for a few seconds forgetting the irrational, cold fear suffocating him. This girl was so confusing, really.

"How do you know, and what the hell does it matter now?", he gasped and his voice sounded way too raspy, his throat feeling raw from panting for air and oxygen.

She shrugged. "I felt you in my head, once. It is not very polite to intrude other peoples thoughts, but I am okay with it. My father teached me occlumency to help against the wrackspurts..." 

Lunas thoughts drifted away, but she quickly reminded herself of the situation before it was too late. That happened a lot to her, she often found it hard to focus on something for too long.

"Do it."

"What?"

Draco stared at her questioningly, forcing out the words. He started digging his nails in his hands and thought for a moment that he felt warm blood begin to trickle out of the small cuts.

"Legilimens me, I can help you."

He desperately gathered his forces and gave a weird pitched, frustrated laugh. "Luna I can not keep up with your madness right now, just shut up and let me suffer." His teeth crunched as his jaw tensed painfully.

"No Draco, I mean it. Phobia is irrational and it is all in your head, I don't think the way you do about small places. Being in my head is like a getaway, you escape your own thoughts and mindset for a moment by exploring mine."

"Why would you do that?", he felt his voice waver and let himself sink to the ground, feeling very close to fainting.

"Come and find out", she smiled. Other people would have said those words in a sarcastic way, a flirtatious invitation. Luna was just honest and pure. She slid down to the floor in front of him, taking her wand from behind her ear and whispering a soft lumos, illuminating their eyes.

Somehow her light seemed more silver than his. But that didn't really matter, he thought. Their legs touched slightly.

Draco gathered his concentration and locked his steel eyes with her blueish ones. He stumbled over the mental barrier because he had used way too much force. It shocked him - even though she invited him in, there would always be a bit of violence necessary to get there. She was very naive to trust him that much.

_He couldn't help but stare with his mouth open at what he saw. He had never experienced anything like that, even though he was getting quite good at Legilimens._

_Usually, when one pushed themselves into anothers mind, it would be more... complicated to get an actual picture. It was always just big, empty rooms with doors, sometimes wooden ones, sometimes some out of iron, sometimes - when an intricate mind - it was mazes of corridors and different ways to go._

_The mindset of most people looked the same, plain and simple, boring._

_But Luna Lovegood, she was extraordinary._

_Her mind was like a different realm, another dimension. He found it hard to understand what was happening when he closed his eyes. Was it an illusion? He promised himself to do a whole bunch of research, if he was to get out of this closet alive._

_There were beautiful mountains at a strikingly clear horizon and he was sitting on a bench by a lake, vividly green fields of grass around him, streaked by small streams that could be crossed on wooden bridges._

_It was like he could actually do something here, he even felt a soft breeze caressing his skin and the warm grass beneath his bare feet._

_He tried to move in there, but couldn't._

_"You have to think about this differently, Draco."_

_Luna appeared in his vision. She looked different, there, wearing only a top and a long, white skirt made of linen. Her feet were also bare. She looked like a fairy of the forest, or something._

_Draco wanted to slap himself for this thought._

_"You can move and talk", she explained softly, spinning around herself to demonstrate it. "You have to... kind of channel your magic and mind, it is not going to work if you think about it like you would when you normally move your body."_

_She seemed thoughtful. "Try to pour a little bit of magic into your body, your manifested here - yet not. It is in your veins, like blood. You could imagine it the same way like when you cross the barrier to someones mind, you have to get more of yourself in here."_

_He watched as she began picking a few flowers off the field, smiling at them happily. It was the smile that he called her Loony for, the one that appeared so faded away, like her mind was elsewhere._

_Draco could understand now._

_He concentrated and tried to imitate the feeling of pure magic being channeled into a wand, trying to let it pour in there. He gasped surprised as he nearly fell off the bench, looking around._

_She shot him a look. "Oh, that was fast. You are a talented wizard, not many people are ready to get this right."_

_He couldn't help himself but snort. "Of course I am, thats not surprising."_

_The slytherin thought he had seen her roll her eyes for a second._

_"What is this place?"_

_She smiled brightly with sparkling eyes. "It is my imagination", was the simple explanation._

_He shot her a look. "Yes, I know that - but, how? Why is there a... landscape? Why can I talk and why can I smell and feel things?"_

_"It is complicated, until it isn't." She considered, uncertain how to explain. "My imagination is just very spiritedly, that is why I have such a beautiful space here. Most people are not able to picture things and smells and feelings so vividly, that is why their mindscapes are predictable. I can influence everything here, it is an illusion. But it also is somehow real."_

_He took a bewildered step back as she began just... fucking floating above the ground, blonde locks flattering around her head._

_"Look, if you are able to imagine even truly impossible things, they become possible here."_

_Draco felt himself lifting off the ground, too. Luna smiled. She hadn't even lifted a finger. He gulped. "That is actually... pretty cool."_

_She laughed, and he thought he had never seen her laugh so free and loud. "I could also turn this into your worst nightmare, you know", she cheerily said._

_He stared, knowing deeply that she would never do this. She probably didn't even mean it as a threat, it was very Luna to just say random things that a normal person wouldn't tell someone who just had a panic attack in a broom closet._

_He couldn't force himself to care about her peculiar manners for a change._

_She floated towards the unrealistically large oak tree in the middle of the wide field, pulling him with her somehow. She landed on an enormous branch and placed him in front of her._

_"Where are your memories?" Draco suddenly wondered, remembering that this was her mind - somewhere she had to store them. He loved magic, and he was very interested int he great things that you could do with it._

_No one would dare to call the slytherin prince a nerd, but in a way, he was. Sometimes._

_"Trying to get to know me, Draco?", she chuckled. He couldn't decipher her. "I stored them deep in those mountains."_

_"Why are you telling me this? I could utilise those information against you", he asked her. Only as he had spoken the words he noticed that it sounded more like 'why do you trust me'._

_She smiled. "For one, I don't believe that you would. The other thing is, that they are well protected by many of the creatures that most people don't believe in. There are only few that could actually get through, I think."_

_He nodded._

_They sat in comfortable silence, Luna making a few flowers rain into her hands and started to weave a beautiful crown._

_Draco was still overwhelmed by how real it all felt._

_But that was not what irritated him most. He somehow was so... different, here. It was like Lunas mind rubbed off on him, but he decided carefully that it was not in a bad way. He felt calm, at peace and kind of important, which were things that he normally had to force himself into._

_He had always thought that power was what made people feel important, that it was the knowledge that you could snap your fingers and other people would fear or follow you. He was bewildered at how wrong he was._

_Luna was feeling more important than he ever did, because she was certain that she did the right things and fought for the good cause. This was important to her, and doing what was important to her lead ultimately to feeling important._

_It was pretty genius, he thought._

_Draco closed his eyes und listened to the sounds of rippling water, chirping birds and the tender humming voice of Luna Lovegood._

# # #

Luna snapped him out of it hours later. He had done nothing but watch the clouds in the sky of her mind shape into figures that she probably imagined, not talking to her, but somehow enjoying her quiet presence.

When she had slowly pushed him out of her mind, he had resisted automatically, even if only for the fraction of a second. She had felt it, but he was thankful that the ravenclaw didn't call him out on it.

It was an enjoyable place, after all.

His eyes slowly got used to the dark of the broom chamber and he stared into the silvery eyes of Luna Lovegood again.

She stood up, he ignored the hand she offered to help him up and got up quickly. His muscles felt very sore from sitting on the ground for such a long time, he was sure that he would ache tomorrow.

Luna opened the door silently with a flick of her wand, stepping out of the closet into the hallway. It was dawn, by now, and the half moon illuminated her face. She gave it a smile and for a moment he had the impression that it smiled back at the girl.

He awkwardly cleared his throat. "Thank you, Lovegood." The words felt like poison to him, ripping his being apart painfully.

She just smiled. "I am always happy to help, Draco Malfoy." She frowned thoughtfully. "Be careful, the Blubbering Humdingers are specifically nasty at this time of the lunar cycle."

The wondrous girl turned her back to him, ready to make her way back to ravenclaw tower. Then she turned her head around again, like she had forgotten something. "Oh, and don't forget to be careful of Miss Norris, too."

The blonde boy looked after her until she had disappeared around the corner, walking in a manner that could be better described as dancing.

# # #

Draco tried to imagine a sky into his mind until he fell asleep that night.


End file.
